Tessa Jowell has told the Leveson inquiry of the "total" invasion of her privacy by the press and said she will provide a dossier of news articles for which she "could not understand" the source.

The former culture secretary was asked on Monday by David Barr, counsel to the inquiry, whether she thought there were newspaper stories that could only have come from phone hacking.

Jowell replied that she "kept on reading stories [in newspapers] and could not understand where they had come from" and added it was as if "friends had simply rung up the journalist" to tell them information.

Barr then asked in which newspapers these articles appeared, Jowell said: "Oh stuff appeared in the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, in the Sunday Times" at which point the former minister was interrupted. She then promised to provide examples to Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry.

After her Leveson inquiry appearance, Jowell was asked by the Evening Standard to clarify her remarks. "I was asked a more general question about other newspapers and I said that at the time of this period of intense media interest, I was aware that newspapers including the Evening Standard, had written stories which displayed a level of great personal knowledge which surprised me and alarmed me," she told the paper.

"I did not suggest that these stories had been procured through hacking my phone."

The earlier exchange at the Leveson inquiry came at the end of a series of emotional answers from the former culture secretary as she relived a period of her life in which she was under intense scrutiny amid questions over the relationship between her estranged husband David Mills and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Jowell said she was first told that her phone had been hacked "on 28 or 29 occasions" by the police in May 2006. Evidence collated subsequently by the current Operating Weeting inquiry into hacking in fact suggests it happened more often than this, she added.

With her voice breaking with emotion, Jowell said once she was told about hacking "it answered a lot of questions I had about why I was followed everywhere and why there were always people outside my house and why … photographers and journalists seemed to know where I was going." She said that the "invasion of my privacy was total in that period".

Jowell insisted that she was prepared to give evidence in the trial of Clive Goodman, the former News of the World royal editor, and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire in 2006, but was told that she would not be needed as a witness because members of the royal household were providing evidence.

She said Metropolitan police detective chief superintendent Keith Surtees was wrong to say in his evidence to the inquiry that she was unwilling to supply a statement at the time of the Goodman/Mulcaire trial. She said that she was "really shocked" when she read his evidence "because it was untrue".

The former minister said that she had now given five statements to the current Operation Weeting inquiry into phone hacking, and said she wanted to be "absolutely clear" that there was no evidence that "any information was being sought other than information that related to my family".

She added that there "was no question of sort of commercial espionage or any attempt to interfere with my duties of as a secretary of state" but added "I did my job every day but life was very, very difficult" at a time when there was "obsessive curiosity about my private life and about my family, who suffered greatly as a result of that".

Leveson asked Jowell whether she had considered making a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, but she said she had not because she did not want "to focus attention on me".

"I certainly don't want to be a focus on public sympathy or anything like that because I'm a secretary of state, I am an elected politician. I'm a very tough and seasoned elected politician, and ... you sort have zero expectations of fair treatment," she added.

Jowell also described how, despite repeated denials, several newspapers continued to report "completely untrue" claims that Mills had "received a bribe from Berlusconi and this money had been used to pay off our mortgage". Jowell said at the time the couple had no mortgage.

She said she met James Murdoch, the News Corporation deputy chief operating officer and former News International and BSkyB chairman, twice a year to discuss government policies.

James Murdoch, who was BSkyB chief executive for much of the period when Jowell was culture secretary, made his views very clear but News International got "nothing" in terms of favours in relation to the BBC licence fee, the Communications Act or digital switchover.

She denied that she had an inappropriate friendship with Matthew Freud, the PR agency owner and husband of Elisabeth Murdoch.

She described him as a friend and attended what counsel to the inquiry David Barr described as "lavish parties" at his home including Elisabeth Murdoch's 40th birthday party. She pointed out she declined an invitation to their wedding because it would "not be proper" to attend.

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